Three generations who have never worked

A new report for the Joseph Rowntree Foundation gives a recognisably faithful picture of the situation of workless people in deprived communities. It shows, yet again, that the myth about “three generations who have never worked” is drivel. The researchers searched “doggedly” in areas of high unemployment for anyone to fit the criteria, and there wasn’t anyone. I’m not surprised, because that’s exactly what the previous longitudinal studies, going back to 1950s, have found: see e.g. Atkinson et al (1983) Parents and children, or Kolvin et al (1990) Continuities of deprivation.